


Breathe baby, breathe (wash us anew)

by sightandsound3733



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alex isn't handling it well, Hospitals, John got himself hurt, Lafayette has graciously taken the place of Alex's babysitter, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, description of injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 20:23:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6535051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sightandsound3733/pseuds/sightandsound3733
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Relax,” Lafayette’s voice is a hum beside him. “Little Alex, relax. Our Laurens will be just fine.”</p><p>“You. Do not know that,” Alexander blinks hard again, realizes he stagnated that sentence and he frowns down at his hands. That was so not like him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe baby, breathe (wash us anew)

The emergency room was too quiet.

Whenever you think of emergency rooms, you think about noise. Frantic noise, babies crying, moans and groans of poor people stuck waiting for their turns, the hum of the hospital a general chorus of hold music for those whose lives hung in the balance.

No one ever said it was gonna be quiet.

Alexander frowns down at his hands clasped between him, blinks hard to focus, to center his thoughts. They were fuzzy, dulled down and mellowed out. He’s not sure if that’s from the buzz of the whiskey or the tequila shots he’s sucked out of John’s navel just an hour or two ago, but it’s definitely a thing. And he doesn’t like it.

“Relax,” Lafayette’s voice is a hum beside him. “Little Alex, relax. Our Laurens will be just fine.”

“You. Do not know that,” Alexander blinks hard again, realizes he stagnated that sentence and he frowns down at his hands. That was so not like him. He blames the emergency room and it’s lack of noise. Messing with his head.

“I do know that,” Lafayette sighs, shaking his head. Alex just catches the bounce of his curls, loose from their high bun, out of the corner of his eye. “And you have to trust me.”

Alexander doesn’t dignify that with a response. What kind of logic was that? John would have laughed, shaken his head like Laf had, teasing him. His curls would have bounced differently, more freely. Alex likes John’s curls. They’re soft, heavier than you expected. He especially likes the way John’s smile curls wide when Alex tangles his fingers in them.

If John was here Alexander would make him smile, nice and wide, crawl into his lap and sink his fingers into his curls. He’d laugh with John over how illogical Lafayette was, kiss the smile, pretty smile, and John would kiss him back. John would kiss him back, hold him close and his teeth would catch on Alexander’s lip, his hips would roll, slow and sinful up into Alexander’s. He’d laugh into Alex’s mouth when he groaned at that, mutters something about knowing how to work his boy just right… he wouldn’t be wrong.

But John’s not here.

John’s not here because he threw himself into a bar fight and got thrown into a table. He’s not here because his head cracked against the wall and his eyes had rolled back into his head. He’s not here because there had been blood and his skin had gone pale, his hand limp in Alexander’s too tight grip and Alexander’s eyes burn. John was supposed to be at his side. He was supposed to have Alexander’s hand in his and hold on tight. They were supposed exchange sweet kisses, to taste the sting of the liquor from each other’s mouths, lick the salt and sweat from their skin and laugh until they were breathless with it.

They were supposed to be okay. They had each other. That should’ve been enough.

Alexander curled his hands together, lacing them tightly in his lap and Lafayette sighs again, laying a hand on Alex’s shoulder. He tries to take comfort from that, knows Lafayette was trying to help but it’s not-he’s not John. Alex wants John. It’s all he wants and it’s not fair, he wants his John, wants his Laurens–

“I know you do,” Lafayette murmurs, leaning closer to him now, pressing their bodies together in the hard plastic of the ER chairs. It’s still too quiet, Alex can hear the squeak of Laf’s sneakers on the linoleum floor. “I know you want John,mon ami.” Oh he’d said that out loud?

Alexander snaps his mouth shut because- yeah. Yeah he’d been babbling under his breath, spurred by the warm buzz from the whiskey and the sharpness from the tequila.

Silence falls between them, its still too much, but Alexander doesn’t want to talk anymore. He closes his eyes tightly, shoulders hunching more into a ball. Lafayette’s hand is warm on his back and Alex focuses on that, the way it seeps through the fabric of his shirt, the slow, gentle way that Laf rubs his thumb in circles over the curve of his spine.

“I wanna go home, Laf,” Alex mutters, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. “How long has it been? I wanna go home with John.”

“Few hours,” Lafayette murmurs, still moving his thumb. “We’ll be done here soon… as soon as we know John is okay.” Alex had to appreciate the definitive there, the unspoken statement that John would be fine. He couldn’t handle anything else.

They let the awful silence fall between them. Maybe it’s the passage of time, or the way that Alexander has nothing else to focus on but Lafayette’s warm hand, but he can feel his mind start to clear, to settle out into a more linear path of thinking.

More focused now, he can hear typing from the reception just before them, can hear the soft murmur or employees conversing behind the desk. He can hear the pad of footsteps in linoleum halls and the faint buzz of the fluorescent lighting. Not so quiet. Not as bad.

Not great. But not bad. All the better when it’s tentatively interrupted.

“Are you here for John Laurens?”

Alexander’s head snaps up and he immediately makes to get to his feet. Woah head rush, okay maybe not completely non fuzzy just yet. He stumbles and it’s a mix of that and the way that Lafayette’s hand of comfort has quickly turned into a restraint. He’s got Alex’s shirt curled in a deathgrip and he yanks the smaller man down pointedly, ignoring the squawk it causes.

“Asseyez petit lion,” Is the sharp instruction aimed his way before Lafayette turns a small, charming smile on the young male nurse before them. The kid looks barely older than nineteen and he’s got this shock of blond, close cropped curls that makes him look even younger. “We are here for Laurens, yes.”

“Let me go, Gilbert,” Alexander glares at him and once again gets to his feet, pulling at the restraint on his shirt. “Man don’t test me, I will fucking just strip right here to get away. Arretez!”

“Vous êtes un enfant,” Lafayette releases him with a roll his his eyes and an annoyed tilt to his lips. “Ne pas me appeler Gilbert. Connard.”

“Back at you,” Alexander is not above sticking out his tongue, and doing so right now feels incredibly satisfying. He turns to the nurse and notes that the kid looks startled.

“Uh.”

“Go on,” Alexander prompts him, more impatient now that he’s free from French tyranny. “You were saying things about John. Tell me more of those things.”

“I… are either of you Alexander Hamilton?” He looks down at the clipboard in his hands, gripping on to the thing for dear life. “That’s uh, the name I have listed as his emergency contact…”

“I’m Alexander Hamilton,” Alex gives a wave of his hand. “Yo. So John. Can we go home yet?”

The nurse blinks again, and looks a little less freaked out, softening as he seems to remember that while mildly drunk and kinda crazy, Alex was still just someone waiting on a patient. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hamilton, John- ah, Mr. Laurens isn’t quite ready to be discharged yet. But I can let you come see him.”

Alexander nods eagerly. “God yes please.” He looks to Lafayette and offers his friend a grin. “We can see John!” Lafayette’s annoyance has apparently evaporated, and he graces Alexander with  a warm smile.   
  
“Oui. You go first. We do not want to overwhelm your Laurens.” Alexander could kiss him. He doesn’t. But he could. He turns back to the nurse and motions for him to lead the way. The kid gives a chuckle and then does so, guiding Alexander up the hall that would lead to patient rooms.

“Mr. Laurens suffered some blood loss, and we were afraid that he had fractured the cranial plates in his skull,” the nurse starts and oh. Alexander can feel his stomach churn with anxiety. He’d spent so long wanting to know what had happened and now he was learning it and he didn’t want to hear it at all. He doesn’t interrupt, quickly keeping pace, and he’s grateful for it because a moment later he hears, “This thankfully wasn’t the case. An MRI has shown that he has a mild concussion and a nasty cut on the back of his head. Head wounds always bleed worse than they are.”

“Yeah, we know,” Alexander breathes an all encompassing sigh of relief, almost goes boneless with it, would have if he didn’t need to keep moving. “Not our first issue in a bar.”

“He said as much,” The nurse chuckles again, offering Alexander a smile. “We’re going to keep him here overnight for observation. If all goes well then we can release him in the morning.” Alexander smiles back and he thinks he thanks him. In reality, he’s not sure if he says anything because they’re stopped now, outside of a small patient room.

The door is open, the lights dimmed low. The room is mostly bare; there’s a heart monitor, a small table with a lamp, a single chair and a bed. And John. In the room, in the bed there is John, his beautiful John, leaning back into the incline of the mattress. His eyes are closed, but he looks okay. Not unconscious and horribly pale. But like he’s just drifted off during a movie night, curled up on the couch with Alex.

His heart stutters, flutters, aches and he steps into the room. The nurse says something, but Alex doesn’t hear. His feet carry him to the bed and the door closes behind him. The heart monitor fills the room with the steady beep of John’s heart and Alexander closes his eyes, lets that sound wash over him, fill him with calm.

He could listen to that all night.

“Hey.”

No he’d much rather listen to this instead.

For the second time that night his eyes snap open, and unlike the last time, he can only smile. John meets his gaze steadily, gives him a lazy smile in return and reaches for his hand. “Hey,” he says again. “Hey beautiful. Wondered when you’d get here.”

“John,” Alexander takes his hand, fumbles to sink into the chair, and presses it to his cheek. His boy looks exhausted, drawn in a way more familiar to Alex’s work habits than anything. A crisp white bandage wraps around his head, sitting in his hair like a headband, and his eyes are darkly dilated. But he’s okay. Alexander searches for more words, but he can only settle on the one. “John.”

“That’s my name,” John chuckles, voice rough with sleep. Alexander presses a kiss to John’s hand, closes his eyes tight again and it all hits him at once. John is here. He’s here and he’s awake. His eyes are open, he’s not pale and he’s talking, looking at Alexander like he’s the world and all the stars in the sky. He’s not bleeding and he’s smiling and- and he almost wasn’t.

Something rough catches his breath, hitches it tight in his throat and it mutates into a sob. A hard, desperate sob that racks his frame and startles them both. Alexander doesn’t drop John’s hand, chooses to press it to his eyes as tears he didn’t know were hiding there burst forth.

“Oh baby,” John’s other hand joins the one Alex has taken captive and then they’re both on his face. “Alexander, Alex, come here. Come up here with me, baby.”

Alexander lets himself be pulled, goes all too willingly too John’s grip and carefully climbs onto the bed. Curling into John’s side is easy, he’s more than mindful of the wires that attach his boyfriend to the machines that fill the silence of the room.

The sobs run freely, don’t grow any less desperate and gos he hopes he can blame this on the tequila. John runs a hand through Alexander’s hair, long gone loose and messy over the course of the night.

“Baby,” he mutters, holding him close. “Why are you crying? I’m okay, I promise. I’m gonna be just fine.”

“I thought you-” Alexander hiccups over the sobs, struggles with his words. His cheeks burn hot, and he has no shame in tucking his face into John’s chest. “T-thought you were dead. So much blood, John I-!”

John hushes him. Presses kisses to the top of his head. Holds him as tight as he can and murmurs softly to him. “I’m fine. I’m fine, I’m fine, querido. I promise. I’m not going anywhere okay? I’m right here with you.”

It’s a long while before Alexander can swallows back the sobs and stop the shaking that rattles his body. It’s even longer before he can look up and meet John’s gaze and lean up for a kiss, gentle. John smiles when he does and holds him close.

They were just fine. This was more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> This was an ask prompt that got really long. So. Here we go.


End file.
